Life in the Fast Lane

Through some weird wrinkle in the cosmos I ended up in the fastest lane at masters today for the first time ever in my long history of masters.  This was the drills workout which doesn't typically attract the out for blood crowd and there was only one really fast person in the fast lane today so it's not a huge thing to brag about but still it felt kinda weird to be the second fastest person in the pool.  I suppose everybody was up in the mountains skiing for President's Day or something.  Anyway, aside from the one fast guy the only other person in the lane was a woman who's about the same speed as me so I moved myself over because I'm having frustrations with the lane I'm in.  Felt so good finally to be able to swim as fast as I wanted without the other people in my lane being in my way and I did confirm my suspicions that I'm faster than them, by about 4 seconds per 100 yards.  Was also nice to not have people leaving 3 secs. after me and riding my heels.  Best part though was that my time for four 100 yards intervals was 1:31, 1:33, 1:34, 1:35 on a 2:00 minute interval and that was without drafting.  I was shocked to be in the low to mid 1:30's since normally I'm in the low to mid 1:40's. 

Last week the coach suggested moving up to that lane and wearing flippers to keep up since I'm waaay slower than everybody when all the fast people show up.  I'm curious to give it a try so we'll see how the lanes play out this week.  I wouldn't do it every workout but maybe every once in a while.  She claims it'll make me faster and so far she's been a huge help to my swimming so it's worth a shot.  Maybe I'll even break that 1:30 barrier for 100 yard intervals that has always seemed such an impossibility.

The other funny thing that happened today was the coach having me swim a freestyle demo for the group to demonstrate an aspect of a drill we were working on.  That's only ever happened once before and it was for breast stroke of all things and so embarrassing and inexplicable because breast stroke is my worst stroke.  But I did o.k. with the freestyle today, phew.

Strummy had his first short leash walk this morning and did great, Project No-limpics marches onward.  I'm toying with the idea of going to Regionals.  The trial secretary told me they're going to have barriers around the rings so it would be a great opportunity for Strum to get used to a big, noisy multiple ring trial before Nationals.  Plus he has a GP Q so we could try for a Semi-Final bye.  But it seems stupid to drive 7 hours to try to qualify for a trial that's 45 minutes away.  I have a hotel reserved but we'll see what the price of gas is like and how my pocketbook is feeling though I do have a free night at a La Quinta so that would help.  Could be fun or could be an expensive hassle.